Tag Archives: Traditional Marriage

Commentary

Barbara Kay writes the best essay against feminism ever written

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Let me introduce the ideology of feminism with a quote from a founder of the feminist movement.

“[A]s long as the family and the myth of the family and the myth of maternity and the maternal instinct are not destroyed, women will still be oppressed…. No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” ~ Simone de Beauvoir, “Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma,” Saturday Review, June 14, 1975.

Here is the greatest essay ever written against feminism – written by Barbara Kay.

Introduction:

The feminism I take exception to today is not the mild and blameless right of a woman to self-actualize that all women absorb by osmosis from the cultural air we breathe, but the radical ideology that has come to dominate the movement’s academic and institutional elites over the last 40 years.

This is an ideology that sees the relations between the sexes as a never-ending antagonistic power struggle, with women as eternal victims and men as eternal oppressors. It is an ideology that explains away the moral failings of women as the fault of a patriarchal “system”, but holds men responsible for their actions. And most important, it is an ideology that shortchanges children by privileging the rights and importance to children of mothers over fathers.

Her first point:

As a result of feminists’ promotion of career equity with men and unrestrained sexual experimentation over early and faithful commitment, women are having fewer children later, and many are having none. Consequently, birthrates are down in all western countries, in many below the replacement levels. Canada’s current fertility rate is 1.54 per woman, behind one-child China’s 1.7.

Sadly, many women realize they want to have children, but too late. They were not warned by their Women’s Studies teachers or by feminist commentators that fertility peaks by age 25, or that late pregnancies carry elevated risks, or that induced abortions pose a risk of pre-term delivery in future pregnancies.

Abortion is now such a commonplace here that it is used as a backup form of birth control. Abortions in Quebec have doubled in the last 10 years: in 1998 16 percent of pregnancies resulted in abortion. Today 30 percent do. You don’t have to be a religious Christian to find that statistic disturbing.

All of these realities are directly traceable to feminist doctrine. Feminists’ original goal may not have been the intention to preside over the actual demographic decline of western civilization. Their goal was to empower women. But as the old saying goes, when you are up to your neck in alligators, it’s difficult to remember that your original intention was to drain the swamp.

Her second point:

Misandry, which is the female equivalent of misogyny (misanthropy is a hatred of humankind), is now entrenched in our public discourse, our education system and social services. Misandry flies beneath most people’s radar, because we have become compliant in the acceptance of theories that have nothing to do with reality, and compliant in the speech codes that accompany that tendency.

Denigration of men in ways both casual and formal are a commonplace in society.

[…]For overt misandry, one has only to survey the industry around domestic violence. You could be forgiven for thinking that domestic violence is a one-way street, for that is certainly the impression one has from the fact that there are innumerable tax-funded shelters for abused women, none for abused men, unlimited funds for campaigns to raise consciousness around abused women, none for abused men. There is not a single social services agency or charity in Canada advertising “family services” that offers counseling, shelter or legal services for men who have been physically abused by women.

Her third point:

I want to talk about the implosion of the traditional family, which can be directly traced to feminism’s repudiation of normative marriage and the role of fathers as vital to a child’s psychological well-being. In June 2006 I wrote about the imbalance, in women’s favour, in the family law system: 90 per cent of contested custody suits end in sole custody awarded to the mother. Such a skewed percentage is unthinkable in any other branch of law.

The family law system is now systemically colonized by radical feminists. Their goal is the incremental legal eclipse of men’s influence over women’s spheres of “identity” interests, which includes children. To that end the custody issue has become a front line in the gender wars, supported by all feminist academics and institutional elites, by supine cabinet ministers and by feminist judges.

Either the majority of women will come to accept her views on feminism… or marriage, and consequently Western civilization, will end.

Commentary

What is the “root cause” of poverty and inequalities of wealth?

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The Heritage Foundation explains – it’s not what you think.

Excerpt:

New data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau show the largest increase in poverty in U.S. recorded history. Under President Obama’s watch, an additional 3.7 million Americans fell into poverty in 2009.

Buried in the Census report are startling figures revealing the principal cause of child poverty: the collapse of marriage. Single mother families are almost five times more likely to be poor than are married couples with children; overall, nearly 70 percent of poor families with children are headed by single parents.

The big secret in the Census report is that marriage is America’s number-one weapon against child poverty. But marriage has been rapidly declining in our society as the number of women who have children without being married has skyrocketed.

Historically, unwed childbearing was rare. In 1964, when the federal government launched its War on Poverty, 6.8 percent of births were to single mothers. Today, the unwed birth rate has soared to 40 percent: four of every 10 births are to a single mother. For Hispanics and African Americans, it’s significantly higher.

This trend is extremely detrimental for society. When compared to children raised by married parents, children raised by single parents are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems; be physically abused; smoke, drink, and use drugs; be aggressive; engage in violent delinquent and criminal behavior; have poor school performance; and drop out of school.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, nearly all unwed fathers are employed, and most earn enough to lift mother and child from poverty. Tragically, however, few unwed parents marry.

Many commentators will say teen pregnancy accounts for most single motherhood, but this is false. Less than 8 percent of new single moms are under 18. In fact, most unwed births are to young adult women in their 20s. The majority of unwed moms don’t have much education; most end up on welfare.

If Americans are serious about reducing poverty and getting control of federal welfare spending, we must strengthen marriage. We can do this in several ways, beginning with reducing anti-marriage penalties currently in welfare programs and providing factual information to low-income communities about the benefits of marriage.

Do you know who is pretty good on this issue? Maggie Gallagher, that’s who. She knows everything about why people should get married.

Excerpt:

5. YOU WILL EARN MORE MONEY. Men today tend to think of marriage as a consumption item—a financial burden. But a broad and deep body of scientific literature suggests that for men especially, marriage is a productive institution—as important as education in boosting a man’s earnings. In fact, getting a wife may increase an American male’s salary by about as much as a college education. Married men make, by some estimates, as much as 40 percent more money than comparable single guys, even after controlling for education and job history. The longer a man stays married, the higher the marriage premium he receives. Wives’ earnings also benefit from marriage, but they decline when motherhood enters the picture. Childless white wives get a marriage wage premium of 4 percent, and black wives earn 10 percent more than comparable single women.

6. DID I MENTION YOU’LL GET MUCH RICHER? Married people not only make more money, they manage money better and build more wealth together than either would alone. At identical income levels, for example, married people are less likely to report “economic hardship” or trouble paying basic bills. The longer you stay married, the more assets you build; by contrast, length of cohabitation has no relationship to wealth accumulation. On the verge of retirement, the average married couple has accumulated assets worth about $410,000, compared with $167,000 for the never-married and $154,000 for the divorced. Couples who stayed married in one study saw their assets increase twice as fast as those who had remained divorced over a five-year period.

Yet another reason for fiscal conservatives to take social conservatives seriously. Marriage makes people more independent, and that means smaller government, lower taxes, and more liberty. What we need to do is block feminists from undermining marriage to serve their gender-neutral ideology, and stop socialists from undermining marriage with the welfare programs which incentivize single motherhood.

Commentary

My friend loves his wife because she defends traditional marriage

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Actually that’s just one of the reasons… you should hear this guy go on about how his wife encouraged him to learn apologetics during the run-up to their marriage.

Here’s an essay she wrote to a pro-SSM friend:

Marriage is the union of a man and a woman who are not already married. No one has the unrestricted right to marry whoever they want, male or female, nor should they. Otherwise where does it stop? Should there be group marriage? Marriage to or between underage children? Marriage with animals? Forced marriage? Well, some of those things already happen in other countries and cultures, and I would say they’re all a net negative on society.

I truly feel for anyone who has a desire for any such relationship, whether it’s that they were born that way or because of some type of past abuse, but that doesn’t mean society has to endorse it and call it marriage. Tolerance is not good enough for gay rights advocates – it’s all out approval or nothing. And don’t say the slippery slope argument is baloney, because it’s not.

What is the purpose of marriage? To provide the best environment for raising children and protection of women and stability of society. Study after study shows that children do best when raised in the home of their mother and father. It’s only recently that marriage was pursued by people because they were in love. Marriage has been in trouble lately in the US, and it’s no surprise that children are turning to gangs, drugs, crime, promiscuity and so on in the search for love and family. I’ve seen this over and over among my own relatives and friends. If you haven’t seen it, you’re pretty blessed, and rare.

I doubt you’re interested in my point of view or will even read this, but here’s a pretty good analysis of the issue:

Based on evidence, gay marriage would not improve society.

I don’t hate gay people (it’s ridiculous that I should even have to say this, but I do feel the need). As above, I even think it’s better for a child to be adopted by a gay person/couple rather than stay in foster care. I have gay friends, family members, blah blah blah insert disclaimer here. I’m just not afraid to say that some things are better for society, and this is the case here.

I think most Americans are like me in that we believe gay people should be treated with kindness, but that the term “gay marriage” is an oxymoron. Even in California, gay marriage was very recently rejected when put to a vote by the people, in spite of a huge campaign on behalf of it.

Don’t worry, I’m surrounded by your point of view all the time, so I’ve already heard all the arguments. ;) And the fact that many fail at heterosexual marriage is not an argument for gay marriage, it’s an argument to reform heterosexual marriage in the eyes of the law and of society. ;) No fault divorce has been terrible for society, including my own immediate family. Some states now have what they call “covenant marriage” which is much stricter in letting people get married and the circumstances under which they can divorce. If that had been available to me, I would have done that.

Ah, she is marvelous. No wonder he loves her – who wouldn’t? When I read a woman writing about marriage, men and children like that, I can believe that lots of women do understand marriage, and that they really do care about their husbands and their children. She must be such a trustworthy and effective Christian mother – her kids are lucky that she can be so persuasive.

The main thing that I like is that she doesn’t think that marriage is some arrangement that is for people who are “in love”. It not about the feelings of the adults at all. There is a specific purpose for marriage, and that purpose is a social purpose. It’s not about individuals getting validation based on the sincerity of their feelings, it’s about bonding two people together who are going to stay together so that they can raise the next generation. It’s a commitment and it’s hard!

Women – if you want to make a man like you, try writing an essay like that to an opponent of your Christian or conservative or traditional views, and then CC your husband/suitor, and add a message saying you look forward to learning more about these issues together with him. Reading essays like this and see how proud her husband is of her makes me think well of marriage. It IS fun to be married and to talk about things like this.